Departments

Page Six Chix

Two freshies, two salties

Put-in

The value of Wilderness (with a capital “W”)

Rises

On hatcheries, access, Yellowstone, and smallmouth

Scuddlebutt

A glossary for striper fishermen, Clyde meets a cop, an Olympic Peninsula fly shack, paddle-makers in Minnesota, more golf-course bass, a collaborative fish-art project, and if tarpon could text each other

Tippets

Ode to the Elwha, Gierach’s coffee, a lost strain of striper fishermen, fake fly anglers, resilient brim in Texas, gangster carp in Jersey, nights in northern Michigan, and death of a dog (spoiler alert: it’s sad.)

Washington's Olympic National Park is best known for iconic steelhead rivers such as the Hoh, Bogachiel, and Sol Duc. It's also home to America's largest dam removal project, which was completed on the now free-flowing Elwha River in August 2014. Here, contributor Brian Irwin recounts his days pouring drinks in the park and exploring a river that "courses through the temperate rainforest amid Paleozoic-sized ferns before crashing into the sea."

It's not all about the Gorge and Black Canyon

MENTION THAT YOU'RE PLANNING A TRIP to Colorado's Gunnison River, and a likely response will be something like, "Oh, cool—are you fishing Black Canyon or floating the Gorge?"

Which makes perfect sense. After all, between the famed salmonfly hatch and national park status of Black Canyon, and the horse-pack/ rafting reputation of Gunny Gorge, it's hard to imagine a flyfisher having not heard of the Gunnison proper. But what about the upper Gunnison, near Crested Butte? Never heard of it? Join the club.

“As with rush-hour driving or the public use of cell phones, everyone believes we need a code of etiquette, but no one can agree on what it would be, and some couldn’t bring themselves to observe it regardless.”
—Ted Leeson, Inventing Montana

Friday

I’ve seen this before. It starts as a spark, then a faint flicker of vermilion on the landscape. Soon it will grow and undulate, slave to the movement of air. This midnight fire will burn until pre-dawn, bringing the illusion of warmth and light to those gathered round it. Tales will be told, punctuated with laughter and silence in equal measure as the faithful indulge in herbal, fermented, or distilled distractions to push back the dark. In each passing moment burns the promise of glory. In the pre-dawn, anglers wobbly with exhaustion stumble after ovals of light in search of grace.

To find the fish, follow the butterflies

In March and April, depending on where you live on the East Coast, the first broods of monarch butterflies hatch from their chrysalis (a cocoon to you and I) and enjoy a short two- to six-week life span. They do what butterflies are best at: they flit around, eat flowers, look pretty, avoid elementary schoolers with nets, and dodge feisty birds. They will follow an irresistible pheromone-scent trail, find some butterfly love, mate, lay eggs on a select milkweed plant, then die. From these eggs, a second generation of monarchs emerges in May and June, and sows the seeds for the third generation to hatch in July and August. A fourth generation hatches in September and October from the eggs laid by the third.

Lee Spencer and the steelhead of the North Umpqua

THE SUMMER OF 1998 was good to Lee Spencer. By fall he’d raised 77 steelhead to his fly on Oregon’s famed North Umpqua River, landing about half of them. (Spencer keeps meticulous notes.) Yet there was a problem. Of the fish he’d landed, three had died—two of them wild. He’d also once brought in a steelhead eyeball on his hook.

Chasing one elusive sunfish

I passed the Rock Bottom Brewery on the final mile of my evening bike loop, where more than once I’d stopped for a thick porter to celebrate not being killed riding the second busiest road in Houston. Restaurants come and go quickly around here, but this place had a twist: A lily pad-filled concrete moat stocked with ravenous rent-a-bass. Even late into a summer pub crawl, I could see hotwater gamefish finning below the front deck, making predatory lunges at dip spit, lime rinds, and roaches.